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This is the third and last image of my woodland scenes that I’ve been posting recently. With all three images I wasn’t very enthusiastic at first, but they grew on me.
I know it’s not perfect. There is still some clutter in the mid ground and some ugly trunks on the left mid side (which are hard to delete). Still, I’d be glad to hear som first reactions to the potential of this composition.
Many thanks!
Markus
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Love to hear some feedback on composition and editing, thanks!
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Guten Tag, Mark -
My first impression? - Great comp and scene, and tack-sharp. The curving foreground tree and small branch is excellent. It’s like looking through a peephole to a farther scene.
I bit more of the trees on the left would balance the heavy trunk, and might work if you have the room. You might lighten up the whites, as well
I really like this!
Oooh this is an eye-catcher. I love winter scenes like this with the snow plastered on the trees. It’s so evocative of winter wind and weather. The frame with the large tree works very well and provides immediacy. The touch of moss on the trunk is really nice and I like the spray of branches in the foreground.
Issues I see are lack of sharpness through the scene. As I don’t know your settings I can only guess at wide aperture and maybe slow shutter speed. Which is weird considering all the light bouncing around that these kinds of conditions produce. Which leads me to the sort of gray snow you have going here. I think upping your whites and exposure would go a long way to it looking right, at least to this northern hemisphere winter lover.
A note on the composition - did you play with getting slightly more to the left? The main tree and the three in the mid-ground work really well, but I don’t love the intruding bits on the left border.
Just some thoughts. Looks like a wonderful forest with tons of potential.
First reaction - oooh, I love it! The foreground tree feels as if it’s cradling the other trees. Those trunks going out of the frame mid-left and the mid-ground “clutter” of grasses don’t bother me, but I think my standards are different than a lot of peoples’. Compositionally, nature is imperfect so those kinds of “imperfections” are to be expected. Put this into a contest, though, and you’d be dinged for those two little trunks, I expect.
I agree with Kris that the snow could be more white, but you don’t want to lose that dim, winter-day mood. I gave it a whirl, see what you think. All in PS - in the selective color layer I moved the neutrals-black slider -20% and the whites-black slider -44% (not sure the correct terms for the selective color options). Once I did the selective color layer, I noticed the subtle shadows more.
@Bonnie_Lampley hit the mark, I think! The snow is much more lively, and our perception seems to expect a tonal distribution around the middle of the histogram in most images. I love the way the snow is plastered on the tree – it evokes like moss or lichen. The BG trees are the same dreamy shapes as your earlier images and I think they are wonderful! You might get away with the Remove Tool in PS on the two trunks that lean out of the frame on the left. Did you walk ahead and do more shots there-- or are these the trees we saw in the other images? It looks like a target-rich environment!
The edge of the large tree is sharp but the BG feels like it could be better. I don’t know what the lens is, but the UR corner shows wide-angle lens imperfections. They could be minimized a bit if you were farther away with a slightly longer lens – it wouldn’t be identical but could be pretty close in this case, I think. Stopping down can help bad corners a lot.
You nailed the composition and @Bonnie_Lampley rework is precisely what the image needs, IMHO. I understand the dark, somber winter mood of the first and it’s certainly personal preference but Bonnie’s brighter processing resonates with me. This isn’t a composition that most photographers would attempt - myself included - but you had the vision and it worked out brilliantly.
